Tomb Raider 2 - 7 reasons why it's the best one
It's Tomb Raider's 25th Anniversary this year where the community gets together and talks about all the Tomb Raider games each month. Last month it was the original Tomb Raider, but I was busy playing Dyson Sphere Program and making an entire website from scratch, so I couldn't write about it then. It all worked out in the end though as this month is dedicated to Tomb Raider 2 which happens to be my favourite and therefore is objectively the best one.
I know the fandom likes to argue a lot. It's actually the original that's the best. The Tomb Raider 3 crew was going to arrive to the debate but they played the game in the wrong order and their preparation materials have been confiscated by the US Government. The Angel of Darkness stans emerge, shrieking from their caves to Parisian club music and a masochistic desire to bat for a game with bad controls, claiming that if the developers 'just had more time' the game would be good. The reboot trilogy fandom are too busy making extremely good gimmick Twitter accounts to show up. I don't think I've met a single person that thinks the LAU series is the best, so I'm just going to assume they don't exist. I'm sure all camps have excellent points of course, but it doesn't really matter in the end, since they are all wrong. Don't believe me? Here's 7 reason why Tomb Raider 2 is the best one.
1. You get to shoot a lot of people
In the original Tomb Raider, Lara Croft does not kill a lot of people - 6 by my count. Rookie numbers. Complete amateur hour over here. I don't actually know what Core Design were thinking. If you are making a video game, you have to be able to shoot a lot of men in it. Luckily, they realised their fatal mistake and made up for it in the sequel by stuffing their game full of bad guys to gun down. We're talking men with big sticks, men with white shirts and silenced pistols. Even men who wield two guns, one in each hand (clearly ripping someone off there) and they take like 50,000 bullets to kill. Excellent stuff.
Compare this to the original Tomb Raider where Lara Croft is single-handedly responsible for the extinction of the Greek Gorilla population. It's bad enough that she owns property in Surrey, but now she's going around the globe killing wolves and jaguars and whatnot - even dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were meant to be extinct. But Lara comes across one and what is the first thing that she does? She shoots it! Unbelievable. Not once does she think "hmm maybe I should forget the Scion for a little bit and call the animal conservationists... I mean this discovery probably trumps whatever I'm about to find in this crummy tomb." The only reason I can think of why she does this is because she enjoys it. Tomb Raider 2 does this much better by having most of the enemies that she faces be members of some stupid Mafia cult. I learnt the other day that they actually have a name, but I can't remember what it is. Anyway, not only is it better than shooting poor, defenceless animals, but she is doing the world a service by systematically checking off the names of every single member of the Italian Mafia. Much better.
2. The Opera House is very cool
While, in 2021, we have dozens upon dozens of think-pieces about how Zelda's dungeons are the second coming of the messiah, I feel like we've lost sight of the true queens of level design: for some reason, people seem to forget that the Tomb Raider games actually have some really good levels. While Venice and The Great Wall are very neat, my pick for favourite goes to The Opera House.
It's a great mix of puzzles, jumping and shooting men in the face. The environments are a challenge to navigate and the Opera House itself looks very cool. There's lots of open space for you to run about in. I like the bit with the collapsing ceiling where you can see a room below and then much later you get to visit that room. Great buildup. See, it's not just Zelda that did it.
It looks very cool. I like it.
The entire place is Home Alone'd in preparation for Lara Croft's arrival. The mafia appear to have set up sandbags in the ceiling that use the power of gravity to crush our poor heroine. It must be very awkward to be a new recruit. Oh what's that? Yeah Jimmy didn't make the first few days. Didn't attend the sandbag safety seminar. Poor guy got crushed. Well, I guess there's nothing we can do about it.
I remember as a kid being very confused at the transition from the Opera House to the Offshore Rig level. I thought it was a bit silly that they had that entire thing hidden behind an opera house, but apparently I forgot that Lara Croft sneaks onto a plane which flies to the oil rig. That makes a lot more sense.
3. You get to experience what it's like to be at the bottom of a sunken ship
It fucking sucks.
4. Eels
During the aforementioned sunken ship segment of the game, you get to fight sharks and barracudas and stuff (don't worry, there is still plenty of men to shoot). Apparently people really really liked the swimming segments in Tomb Raider because they decided to make an entire section of the sequel dedicated to it. I have no idea why they decided to do this. I do like the idea of starting the level underwater while you're being circled by sharks and you have to find a tiny 1x1 block opening in some ship in order to make it out alive, oh and I hope you saved the game and also if you're doing this 24 years ago you have to do it on a CRT where 1 pixel is like half the screen and it's dark and did I mention you're underwater? It's not exactly the strongest point of the game, but I'm glad it's there. There's also a bit where you fall from a ceiling almost to your death, but Lara Croft is a super hero who's wounds can be healed by the incredibly strong drugs lying in the Large Medipacks. Anyway, I'm getting distracted.
Yeah, don't worry game I don't need to see three feet in front of me or anything, it's fine.
The Maria Doria is not great and even the bits where you're on shippa firma aren't too enjoyable either. Whenever I play the game, it's usually the bit I try and work my way through as quickly as possible. But in order to actually do that, you have to discover and overcome one obstacle that lies at the very end.
This guy.
OH GOD HERE HE COMES
Look at it.
The eels only appear in the last few minutes of this section. We're back to Tomb Raider days where the game just hurled a dinosaur at you for no reason. What is this? This is terrifying. Just imagine, you're minding your own business trying to get to the end of this bit and this absolutely brainless being jumps out at you. They don't even chase you. They just hide in their little gremlin cubby holes. You've taken the Cool Artifact that you need, so you know you're nearly at the end; you just need to swim out. But no. This little guy decides to just show up and start taking chunks out of Lara Croft's left thigh. True horror hours. Never again. I always dread this bit when I'm playing.
5. Okay, fine. The Monastery Level is "good"
I get it. It's a huge, open ended level that you can tackle any way you want. There's some really cool environments to look at here, with that cool Buddha statue thing. It's one of those "you need to get through this door which is locked by 6 identical keys that are scattered around the level that you need to collect" jobs. It's a really good level. There's even a bit where the temple is under attack by the boys, but there are monks firing about that defend it and if you leave them alone, they'll help you fight. That's very cool, I'm sure that was revolutionary at the time.
But. I don't like this level. The reason why is this stupid whirlpool right here.
Hmmm looks pretty impassable to me...
When I played this level for the first time, I took a dive in the whirlpool and got taken down to the bottom. "Right" I thought "I guess there has to be some way of turning that off so I can get to the other side" as I reloaded a save. After collecting all the prayer wheels, I still couldn't find the last one. Up and down the halls of the Monastery, I scoured, for hours, for the last remaining wheel. Couldn't find it. I hit the mode of flinging myself into pits because that might be where the stupid prayer wheel is.
And it turns out that it was the optimal strategy. You see if you contort your fingers on the keyboard enough, it's possible to actually fight the whirlpool and get to the other side. That's where the prayer wheel is. And that's dumb and stupid and I don't like it.
It's still a good level though.
6. You can get on a snowmobile that's basically uncontrollable
A big thing about Tomb Raider 2 was the fact that Lara Croft could drive numerous (2) vehicles. In Venice you get to fire about on a boat, as the initiation ritual for the mafia apparently involves opening a door from one side of the city and then crashing through the canals at break-neck speed to the other side, in order to make it through the door before it closes. Very normal stuff. I always pressed the shift key to try and speed up the boat, but I'm pretty sure it did nothing.
Later on, you get the pleasure of riding a snowmobile for about three seconds, before realising it is completely uncontrollable and seeing if you can do the entire level on foot instead. It turns out you can! There's one very difficult jump that takes thirty tries to get right, but everything else is easily doable. It makes me wonder if this was intentional - whether they knew that the snowmobile sucks, but because they didn't know how controls in video games worked yet, they just let you traverse the level with the method you're used to. It's a very interesting way to approach the level and is a lot of fun. I don't think I've actually completed the snowmobile level in the "proper" way and I don't think I ever will. In my universe, Lara Croft had a snowmobile accident at a very young age and never got the courage to get on one again. Or something. Like that.
7. Eels
LOOK AT IT!!!
